Betrayal
by Queen Apolline
Summary: The Titan Kronos and his views on his relationship with Leuke, Titaness of Shadows and Secrets, in three-shot form. Directly related to "Third Life." Probably won't make sense without it.


**I do not own Percy Jackson. Everything about Leuke but her name is mine.**

He was a child the first time he fell in love. As the youngest of his siblings, most of his childhood was spent alone with his mother and his oldest niece, who was a year older than him – _a fact that she never let him forget_.

She was his first love. He adored her as a child. She was just as vicious as he could be, raised alongside him on his mother's talk of treachery and hatred. She was his perfect match, his dark shadow, his Leuke.

Mother sent her away when she was a thousand years old. Leuke's powers were too dark, too strong for Mother to teach her to contain. So Mother sent her away, to Erebos and Nyx, Darkness and Night. And Leuke stayed there for a thousand years.

Kronos wasn't idle while she was gone. He helped his mother lure Ouranos to Earth, and then took the scythe she made him and killed him. His brothers held him down (except Oceanus, because Oceanus was a _coward_ and too obsessed with his wife and ridiculous number of children to bother helping) and Kronos chopped him to tiny little pieces before scattering them in Tartarus and throwing his privates into the sea.

His brothers squirmed when he did it. None of them had been brave enough to do it, and they were barely brave enough to help.

When Leuke showed up at their newly-constructed Mount Othrys palace a couple hundred years later, she'd pouted at him and asked why he hadn't invited her to help with murdering Ouranos. She would've had fun carving into him with the glowing black dagger her _trophós_ had given her.

His childhood adoration turned to more right then. The smirk teasing at her lips, the contrast between her black curls and pale skin, and the unrepentant bloodlust held in Mother's bright green eyes in the wrong face…it did him in then and there.

He was extremely pleased when she decided to move into the new palace and inserted herself into court life. It wasn't long before he asked her to take care of one of his more troublesome nephews who was making plans above his station. She left with a laugh and came back with a smile and blood dotting her moon-pale skin and his nephew was dead and all he could think was _beautiful_.

He chased her, after that. Sometimes they'd come together, and Kronos had no illusions that he'd caught her. Anytime they came together it was because she _let _him. It was wild, it was violent, it was everything he desired and more and he _wanted_.

But she didn't submit. She never did.

When he asked her to bind herself to him, to be his eternally, to be his one and only, she laughed and turned him down before tempting him into another fight for dominance as they coupled once more.

(That was when Kronos realized how his mother must have felt, how there was such a fine line between love and hate, because he loved her, but in that moment when she turned him down, he_ hated_.)

It continued to fester from there. Even as he loved her, he hated her for turning him down. They could have been _great_ together. He was already great, and with his unstoppable assassin as his Queen, no one could have ever challenged him.

(Kronos' hound, they whispered about her. Kronos' _bitch_, when they thought she couldn't hear them. Their feelings of security were false. She could _always_ hear them, and she'd later regale him with the tales of what she did to them. She was colder after those times though, flirting less, ignoring the fact that he loved her. He did his best to make sure no one ever said anything that would make her regret.)

She still wouldn't marry him. (He did ask again, over a thousand years after she came to Mount Othrys, a century after they'd thrown the Cyclopes and Hekatonkheires back into Tartarus. He'd flown into such a rage that even _she_ had left, she who knew how to handle his rages, and had gone to visit her foster parents instead.)

Eventually, he met his sister Rhea again (she was older now and so very beautiful), pursued her instead, convinced _her _to be his Queen and everything he'd wanted Leuke for.

And Leuke…didn't care. That hurt more than anything, her easy acceptance that he was taking a wife that wasn't her. She voluntarily chose to become one of Rhea's attendants alongside some of her sisters, despite the fact that she worked for _him_ not his wife. But there weren't _that _many people he needed her to kill, and Leuke occupying herself with his wife and her sisters was better than Leuke being bored and maiming people (or worse, prancing off to visit her _trophós_ again and getting _ideas_). Having Leuke watching his wife at least meant that _he_ didn't need to watch his wife, because Leuke was _his_ and wouldn't let his wife betray him.

He didn't want children. Ouranos had prophesied that he would have a child to overthrow him, just as Kronos had overthrown Ouranos.

Rhea apparently didn't listen to that, and gave birth to a child after their first century of marriage. It wasn't a son, and sons were more likely to overthrow their fathers, but Kronos wasn't taking any chances. He took the babe from Rhea's arms and swallowed her. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but he did it.

Rhea was raging, screaming, crying for her child. Kronos had to order Leuke to take her away, back to her own rooms, until she'd calmed down.

It was in the aftermath of that he began to chase Leuke again, but she turned him down before he'd even begun. She didn't smile and tease and let him chase her as she had before. Now she was cold and dark and as untouchable as her shadows. She refused to lay with a man who had a wife.

(That at least meant that none of his brothers would be sleeping with her either, but he wasn't happy about it. And all of the younger generation were too terrified of Leuke to even think of sleeping with her.)

Then Rhea Kept. Having. Babies.

He swallowed them, each and every one of them. Two girls (after the first one and the original decision that swallowing was a good idea) and three boys, the last of whom felt like eating a piece of a _mountain_.)

It was shortly before the mountain-baby that another group of Oceanus' daughters came to visit the court. He already knew several of them – Leuke, of course; Iapetus' wife, Clymene; Atlas' wife, Pleione; Metis and Amphitrite, who also served as Rhea's attendants; Doris, who'd married old man Nereus and seemed to be trying to recreate her parents' number of progeny; Electra, who'd visited Doris and Nereus and ended up marrying his brother Thaumas and never leaving; Prometheus' wife, Hesione; Lelantos' wife, Perioboia; Pallas' wife, Styx; and dozens of others because _Oceanus and Tethys apparently had nothing better to do than make babies_. But he'd never met this set before, and one of them immediately caught his eye.

She had night-black curls, moon-pale skin, and dark green eyes. They weren't as bright as Leuke's, and her smile was soft, with no hint of Leuke's cruelty, her bloodlust, her ruthlessness, and everything that made her perfect for him, but that meant she had nothing that would allow her to stop him from taking what he wanted.

He found her among the wildflowers of Mount Pelion, so he took the form of a _horse_, a creature that Koios had described from his visions of the future, and took her, made her his, took out all his anger and frustration at Leuke on the sister who could have been her double, forcing her to do what Leuke wouldn't, because Leuke could stop him but her sister couldn't.

He left her there, on that mountaintop, when he was through, and went back to Mount Othrys feeling pleased with himself. He'd gotten what he'd wanted. Now he might not have the urge to chase Leuke down again the next time he saw her standing at his side in the throne room, or walking with his wife, or eating dinner at the same table during the banquets.

He never bothered learning her name, though it didn't matter much since she never came to Olympus again.

And then he was tricked into vomiting up his children, because _apparently_ Rhea had given him a rock instead of his youngest son (which explained why it felt like swallowing part of a mountain) and his new cupbearer was actually said youngest son.

When everything was said and done, he was out a cupbearer, a wife, the children that had been residing in his stomach, and the keys to Tartarus. Metis had apparently fallen in love with his youngest son – whatever his name was – and helped them in their escape by drugging Leuke and leaving her unconscious in her bedroom.

It took them two weeks to figure out the correct combination of herbs for the antidote, during which time his children broke into Tartarus, killed Kampê, rescued the Cyclopes and Hekatonkheires, got powerful new weapons, and went into hiding. By the time they managed to wake Leuke up, they were in so deep that even she couldn't find them.

Kronos was relieved when she woke up. They'd already taken his wife, they were trying to take his throne, but they hadn't taken his Knife, his Leuke from him.

With any luck, he'd be out of a wife when all this was over, and she'd finally agree to be his.

The war was long, hard, and dramatic. Despite the fact that he had his brothers, Atlas, and _Leuke_ on his side, his wife and children still fought hard and still managed to win. Eventually, they were pushed back to Mount Othrys.

Kronos wasn't worried. Mount Othrys – though they hadn't expected trouble – had been built to be impenetrable.

And it was. Zeus simply brought the roof down on their heads.

In the end, when Kronos stood there facing the gods and their allies, Atlas at his right hand and Leuke at his left, Iapetus and Krios beside Atlas and Koios and Hyperion beside Leuke, his youngest son looked at him, siblings arrayed around him and Rhea behind him, Metis at her side, and said one word: "Now."

The gods charged them, but Kronos couldn't move to meet them due to the cold pain that erupted in his chest, and he turned his head to see Leuke's familiar features twisted into a mask of cold hatred.

"This is for Philyra, _bastard_," she snarled in his ear as she twisted the knife and began to carve his heart from his chest, even as his youngest son stole the scythe from his hands and his oldest son pinned his hands to the ground and his middle son pinned his legs.

His wife, daughters, and their allies seemed to be winning without too much trouble, pinning his brothers down and wrapping them in chains inscribed with all manner of magical protections. Hecate's work, he supposed. Possibly, he thought as Leuke's knife scraped across one of his ribs, with Leuke's help.

"No one will ever forget this, Leuke _Proditis_," he named her as ichor dribbled out of his mouth and down his lower lip. _Traitress_. "You may be the Titaness of secrets and shadows, of lies, murder, and espionage, but from now on until the end of time you shall also be the Titaness of traitors, because that is what you are." He looked up at his youngest son as he loomed over him. "She won't be loyal to you," he promised. "She'll be as loyal as she was to me. She's a shadow, and shadows shift. It's in her nature to be disloyal. You won't keep her. She will betray you one day."

He hissed in pain as Leuke twisted the knife deeper before reaching her hand into his chest and _pulling_. She came to stand in front of him, kneeling down with his still-beating heart in her hand so she could hold into tauntingly in front of his face.

"You betrayed me first," she said coldly. "You betrayed me the moment you forced yourself on my sister Philyra, when you forced her to bear your child. You hurt what is _mine_, and that I can never forgive."

"I loved you!" Kronos spat.

The look in her eyes was glacial.

"I cared for you," she allowed, though there was no warmth in her statement. "You were my closest friend. You understood me as no one else did. But I never loved you the way you loved me. And any love I ever had for you has long since turned to hate."

She stood up, his heart still in her hand and told his youngest son, "He's all yours."

"And the heart?" his eldest son asked.

Leuke smiled, cruel and cold.

"I think I'll keep it. A small reward for my pains. I'll make sure to put it someplace that Kronos can never find it…not that he'll have the limbs to look when you're through with him."

She walked away, heart in hand, as Zeus began carving into him with his own scythe.

**AN: So...Leuke was a lot darker before she and Hades became a thing and then she died and became a mother. She and Kronos really drew the worst out of each other. **

**I am planning for this to be a three-shot. The next chapter will be Kronos' reaction to Leuke's reappearance and actions in chapters twenty-two and twenty-three. The third chapter will be Kronos and Leuke during ****_The Last Olympian_****, and will not be published until I finish ****_The Last Olympian _****in "Third Life****_._****"**


End file.
